Isle Be Seeing You

by Sandy Beech

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  My parents have always told me that people can get used to just about anything. I used to be pretty skeptical about that, mostly because Mom and Dad were usually trying to convince me to “get used to” something I didn’t want to get used to at all, like steamed broccoli or my little brother, Kenny.

  But after being stranded on a deserted island with eight other middle-schoolers, the craziest teacher in school, and that very same obnoxious little brother, I’m starting to think maybe Mom and Dad were right all along.

  I found myself pondering that concept as I sat on the beach one sunny tropical morning trying to open a coconut with a screwdriver. I was wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed in two weeks, every inch of exposed skin itched from my newest layer of sunburn and bug bites, and a jagged seashell was poking me in the butt. The weird part? It all felt almost normal.

  “Come on, Dani.” Chrissie Saunders broke into my deep thoughts with a weary sigh and a pouty look. She wriggled her toes in the sand and stared at me. “Were only trying to help.”

  “Yeah, really!” added her twin sister, Cassie, with all the melodrama she could muster. And she could muster quite a bit. Her big brown eyes widened, her lower lip quivered. Even her springy dark hair seemed to get a little springier. “If you don’t figure out what to do about Josh soon, we’ll just die!”

  I sighed and stared down at the coconut in front of me. The twins might look all innocent and cute, with their big brown eyes and perfect light brown skin, but they could latch on like a pair of pretty little piranhas when they felt like it. Their constant nagging about Josh Gallagher was just one more thing I was getting used to after being shipwrecked on the sun-crisped little patch of sand, trees, and bugs we called Castaway Island.

  You might be wondering how in the world a bunch of ordinary middle-schoolers from Florida wound up in such a bizarre situation. Good question. I mean, if one little thing, one decision or action or moment hadn’t happened the way it did, everything could have turned out differently I think that’s what people call fate, but in this case, at least, it seemed more like the unfortunate result of a whole bunch of bad decisions.

  Decision 1: My decision to sign up immediately for the environmental-cleanup trip that my science teacher, Mr. Truskey, was leading. Now, this was a bad decision because I already knew Mr. T was a little nuts. Whenever he’s involved in something it goes wacky-doodle sooner or later. Usually sooner. Besides, I didn’t even check with my best friends, Michelle and Tina, before I signed up, or find out who else was going. More on that when we get to …

  Decision 2: Angela Barnes’s decision to sign up for the trip too. Did you ever get a big old wad of used chewing gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe? Well, Angela is pretty much the chewing-gum wad on my shoe of life. And she likes me about as much as I like her, probably because I’m just about the only one in the sixth grade who has the guts to point out that she’s not nearly as perfect as she thinks she is. So when I found out she was signed up for the island trip, I decided I definitely wasn’t going after all. Which leads us to …

  Decision 3: My parents’ decision not to let me back out of the trip. They claimed it was for my own benefit, but I have my doubts about that. Mainly because of Decision 3B, which was their decision to beg Mr. Truskey to take my eight-year-old brother, Kenny, along on the trip as well. I always thought they were joking around when they talked about shipping both of us off somewhere for a week or two so they could have the house to themselves. But apparently it was no joke.

  Decision 4: Mr. Truskey’s decision to eat a choo-choo bug. This was a big one. Like most people, I’d never even heard of a choo-choo bug—more officially known as the lesser equatorial beachwalker beetle—before the trip. That’s because they only live on a handful of islands in the remote Esparcir chain. Within the first few hours on one of those islands, all of us on the trip got to know them way too well. They may be a rare and valuable part of the world’s ecosystem, like Mr. Truskey says, but on their home islands, they are the ecosystem. At least it can feel that way when four or five of the giant, ugly beetles are buzzing around your head while a couple more are nibbling on your ankles. So why did Mr. T decide to nibble back? Don’t ask me. But like I said, it was a bad decision. Very, very bad.

  Decision 5: I guess this one is another two-parter. Decision 5A would be when we all decided to board the boat that was supposed to take us back to the mainland despite the fact that Mr. Truskey seemed a little out of it. After he barfed up half his guts and passed out on the deck, we realized it must have been the choo-choo snack that did him in. That’s when we moved on to 5B, which would be our decision to try to find our way back to the mainland on our own rather than dropping anchor and staying put until Mr. T woke up or someone found us. Honestly, 5B didn’t seem like such a bad decision at the time. Who wants to sit around waiting for who-knows-how-long when there’s any other choice? But it immediately became known as the worst decision of all time when our boat crash-landed on a coral reef and stranded us on yet another bug-infested strip of sand and palm trees.

  So that’s the short version. All those bad decisions had led me to that moment, sitting on the beach cracking coconuts for lunch and talking about Josh.

  Oh, yeah, about Josh. See, one of the things about Angela is that she feels like she’s totally entitled to anything she wants. So when she set her beady blue eyes on Josh, I knew I had to intervene. He’s such a nice guy that I was afraid he might not be able to recognize her true evilosity. After much thought I’d realized that the only surefire way to keep her from getting him was to get him myself—or at least distract him until we got rescued. That was when I’d gone to the twins for help, since they were the cutest girls in the sixth grade and generally had way more experience than I did with all things Boy.

  “Well?” Chrissie demanded. “What do you think of our ideas? Are you going to try them?”

  “Yeah,” Cassie added. “Why aren’t you even saying anything about this whole Josh situation anymore? You’re acting so, like, quiet and thoughtful and stuff. Its totally not like you.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Guess I’m still a little tired from working so hard yesterday. You know, cleaning up from the hurricane and all.” Two nights earlier a sudden tropical storm had attacked the island. Our little camp had been pretty much totaled—our shelter, the fire pit, everything—forcing us to spend the night in one of the bat-infested caves in the cliffs lining the beach.

  “Oh, yeah.” Cassie wrinkled her nose. “My arms are still aching from dragging all our stuff out of the lagoon. It was worth it, though—everything’s almost back to normal now!’

  Chrissie sighed loudly. “Whatever,” she said. “In case you guys didn’t notice, Angela spent most of yesterday following Josh around.”

  “I noticed.” Cassie frowned at me. “She hardly did any work at all. Unless you consider flirting work, like Dani does.”

  I didn’t answer, standing up and pretending to be very busy picking out a new coconut from the pile nearby. The twins were obviously getting kind of frustrated with me, and I couldn’t really blame them. They were just doing what they’d promised—trying to help me get Josh’s attention.

  There was just one problem. I already had it!

  That was one thing I wasn’t getting used to too quickly. It still m
ade me feel weird to think about it—kind of light-headed and floaty, sort of like when I had the flu. I could feel my cheeks going red and could only hope my sunburn hid the evidence of what I was thinking. Because no matter how much I was dying to tell the twins the truth about what had happened between Josh and me during the hurricane, I couldn’t do it. Josh had asked me to keep it a secret. I still wasn’t quite sure why, but I was trying to be understanding and accept his wishes. Wasn’t that what a good girlfriend should do?

  Luckily the twins started arguing with each other about which of them had done more work the day before and didn’t notice that I’d fallen silent again. Sitting down beside them, I clenched my teeth as I struggled to pry open another coconut.

  “Nice face, Dani,” Chrissie teased as I grimaced over the coconut. “Really makes you look—”

  “Hi.”

  I jumped, almost dropping the coconut on my own foot. Feeling my face starting to go beet red again, I looked up and saw Josh standing there.

  “Hi, Josh!” Cassie said immediately, slipping into her talking-to-boys voice.

  Personally I don’t have a talking-to-boys voice. That’s probably because on a girlyness scale of one to ten, with ten being somebody like Marilyn Monroe and one being, say, Hulk Hogan, the twins rate about a nine and a half, while I’m probably closer to a three. Maybe a two.

  “So, Josh.” Chrissie smiled beguilingly at him, her eyes twinkling. “What’s up? Were you looking for someone in particular? Someone like, oh, me, or Chrissie, or maybe Dani?”

  I winced as Cassie giggled and poked her sister in the shoulder. They couldn’t be less subtle if they were both wearing huge, blinking neon signs reading WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE.

  Josh scratched a bug bite on his tanned arm, staring at her uncertainly. “Um, I was looking for Dani.” He pushed his dark hair out of his eyes and glanced at me. “You know that tent pole that got all bent out of shape in the storm? Ryan had a great idea—he turned it into a basketball hoop. We just finished hanging it up down at the far end of the beach. Want to come shoot some coconuts with us? We need one more to make the teams even.”

  “Sure” I said immediately. I dropped my coconut and screwdriver on the sand and stood up, ignoring the twins’ dismayed expressions. I could almost read their thoughts: Alert! Alert! Jock talk in progress. Change subject to something girly, stat!

  “Okay, you guys” Chrissie said. “Josh, take it easy on Dani. Remember, she’s just a girl. You know, delicate, sweet, sugar and spice, everything nice….”

  I rolled my eyes. The twins kept insisting I had to show Josh that I was more than just a girljock if I wanted him to notice me. Personally I thought that was stupid. Josh and I both played basketball—that was pretty much how we became friends in the first place. Why would he suddenly want to start talking about, I don’t know, highheeled shoes and nail polish? It totally didn’t make sense.

  “Come on, Josh.” I decided it was time to get out of there before they embarrassed me any further. “Lets roll.”

  “Don’t wander off together and get lost on your way there,” Cassie said with a playful wink.

  Josh looked confused. “Oh,” he added. “Er, by the way, you guys can come along with us and play too if you want.”

  “No, thanks.” Chrissie grinned at me. “I dont think Dani would like that very much.”

  “Have fun, you two!” Cassie trilled.

  “Sorry about that,” I muttered as Josh and I hurried down the beach. It was midmorning, and the tropical sun was beating down with its usual enthusiasm. The sand was practically sizzling beneath my bare feet, though I hardly noticed. That was just one more thing I was getting used to on the island.

  Josh glanced over his shoulder, his dark eyes puzzled. “Okay, do I have a big green booger hanging out of my nose or something? Because the twins were acting really weird just now!”

  I sighed, wishing I wasn’t quite so honest. If I was sneaky and evil like Angela, I could just toss my hair and change the subject. Instead, I was going to have to tell him the embarrassing truth.

  “They’re, um, trying to set us up,” I explained, trying to sound casual and matter-of-fact. In other words, not as if this whole conversation was making me totally uncomfortable. “I guess they think, you know, we would make a good couple or something…. You know they’re obsessed with that kind of stuff.”

  “Oh.” Josh ducked his head a little so I couldn’t see his expression. But even so, I could tell he was uncomfortable too. Weirdly enough, that made me feel a little better about being so embarrassed myself.

  “Anyway, don’t worry” I added. “I didn’t tell them anything.”

  “Oh, okay’Josh sounded uncertain.

  I held my breath. Maybe he was changing his mind about keeping our new relationship a secret. Maybe he’d realized it would be easier to go ahead and tell everyone. Sure, it would be a little embarrassing at first. But at least everything would be out in the open. The twins would be happy for me, Angela would be miserable—it would be great.

  Then Josh shrugged. “Okay, good,” he said. “I was afraid maybe they’d figured it out or something.”

  My shoulders slumped. “Nope.” I did my best to sound cheerful. “They’re clueless. Totally”

  We were nearing the far end of the beach by then so we stopped talking. Up ahead a hilly wash of boulders and scrubby trees took over from the smooth white sand, tumbling straight down from the steep side of the island’s central mountain into the clear, aquamarine water of the lagoon. On the flat section of beach on the near side of the rocky slope, four people were waiting for us. Ryan Rodriguez was attempting to juggle three coconuts while Brooke Hubbard looked on disapprovingly. Mr. T was twirling a chunk of his frizzed-out, overlong black hair around one finger and staring at the sky. Kenny was sitting on a boulder with his finger up his nose.

  “She’s in,” Josh called out, jogging forward. “Dani’s going to play”

  “I call captain!” Ryan shouted, leaping about four feet into the air and waving his hand around like he was trying to flag down the space shuttle. For him, it was a subdued reaction. Ryan is what some of the teachers at school call spirited. Others just come right out and call him what he is, which is a total spaz.

  “Me too,” Brooke called out, raising her hand in a much more civilized manner. Everything Brooke does is civilized. As the only eighth grader on the trip, she considers herself much more mature than the rest of us sixth- and seventh-grade peons. She also considers herself a natural leader, probably because of her years of student council experience, so it was no surprise she’d called captain.

  Josh shrugged. “Okay” he said. “Ry, go ahead, you get first pick since you called first.”

  I was expecting Ryan to pick Josh, who was clearly the best basketball player on the beach. Since I’m the obvious second-best choice, if I do say so myself, I was already stepping toward Brooke when Ryan stabbed a finger in my direction and grinned.

  “McFeeney,” he announced, “you’re with me.”

  Brooke may be a little too civilized for her own good, but she’s no dummy. “I pick Josh,” she called out quickly, as if afraid Ryan would realize his mistake and change his choice.

  That left Kenny and Mr. Truskey. “Who should I pick?” Ryan asked me in a whisper.

  I shrugged. Under the circumstances I didn’t see much of a difference. It wasn’t as if either of them was going to be much use on the court. Mr. Truskey seemed a little saner than usual at the moment—at least he was standing upright and focusing both his eyes on the same place—but choo-choo craziness aside, there was a reason he was a science teacher and not a gym teacher. He could hardly keep himself from tripping over his own Birkenstocks even at the best of times. Then again, Kenny was at least a foot shorter than anyone else, plus he was likely to get distracted at any moment and go chasing off after a choo-choo bug or something.

  “I don’t know. Mr. T, I guess.”

  Just then Kenny finally dragged
his attention out of his own nostril and back to what was going on. “Hey,” he said. “Pick me, Ryan. Pick me!”

  Ryan shot him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, little dude. I’m going to have to go with Mr. T.”

  Mr. Truskey blinked and looked up from his own hair. “What did I win?” he asked happily.

  “Looks like you’re with us, Ken,” Brooke said, sounding resigned. “Come on over”

  Kenny stuck out his tongue at me as he skipped over to join his new teammates. “’S okay. I didn’t want to be on Danielle’s team anyway”

  I rolled my eyes. Most people never call me by my full name, Danielle, because they know I hate it. Which is exactly why Kenny uses it as often as he can. “Come on, people,” I said briskly, clapping my hands. “Let’s get started!”

  “Whoo-hoo!” Ryan shouted. “Come on, Mr. T. Let’s huddle.”

  Mr. Truskey gazed at him. “What’s that, Friedrich?”

  Ever since eating that choo-choo bug, Mr. Truskey can’t quite seem to keep our names straight. We were all getting used to answering to just about anything. I could only hope his choo-choo-addled mind still retained the rules of basketball.

  “Just come on over here, Mr. T.” I waved him over. “We’ll explain everything.”

  Ryan insisted that I play center, which meant I found myself facing off against Josh. Mr. Truskey was assigned to guard Kenny, while Ryan raced over and positioned himself near Brooke, leaping and waggling his arms while she watched him with annoyance.

  The game started. It was a little weird playing with a coconut instead of a real balL as I discovered when I automatically tried to dribble around Josh as he came in for a steal. Feinting to the left, I pushed down on the “ball,” already leaping forward to meet it on the bounce. The coconut plopped onto the sand and lay there inertly, and I felt my bare toe connect with it as I lurched forward.

  “Oops.” I felt my face go red as I windmilled my arms to stay upright.

  Behind me I heard Brooke laugh. “Good one, Dani,” she called sarcastically.